Xbox 360 Games | Game Reviews | Technology Reviews

Main menu

Post navigation

MediaFire Battles for Cloud Storage Crown

It seems that every day you hear more about cloud storage; that mystical technological endeavor that lets users hoard their documents, photos, music, videos, etc. in storage databases miles away from their devices, letting them free up their invaluable hard drive space. Today, MediaFire has released the free 2.0 update for its iOS cloud services application which has over 37 million registered users around the world and is quickly becoming one of the most popular personal cloud storage services around.

The update includes features that make the experience more fluid and user-friendly such as automatic photo and video syncing, enhanced music and video streaming features, new mobile file-sharing features and a redone high resolution interface. As much as these upgrades make the file storage experience less harrowing, they aren’t what make this dark horse noteworthy. Free users are given a generous 10 gigabytes of space. That’s 5GB more than iCloud and Amazon CloudDrive and 8GB more than DropBox. But, two of the big names, Google Drive and OneDrive, have it beat by offering 15GB to free users. However, MediaFire has a couple tricks up its sleeve in the battle for cloud storage dominance. With referrals and other actions users can gain up to a whopping 50GB for free. FOR FREE! After only using it for an hour I was already up to 15 gigs. Still not enough space for you? Currently the Pro upgrade package which gives users 1 terabyte of space is only $24.99/year or $2.49/month. A comparison you say? Google Drive charges $9.99/month for 1TB, on Amazon’s service 1TB will cost you $500/year, DropBox will cost you nearly $500 for only 500GB, and a measly 50GB on iCloud is $100/year. It seems that Microsoft is the only company out there putting up a fight with their 1TB Business edition on sale right now for $2.50/month. Without earning any extra space this puts OneDrive at slightly higher ground offering more initial space and a possible upgrade matched to MediaFire’s. Despite this fact, MediaFire still has one of the best deals on the market beating out the prices of nearly every competitor.

I had the pleasure of trying out MediaFire with the new 2.0 update before launch and I have to say that I was impressed. Right away the new interface struck me with its simplistic layout and feel that showed all the user’s folders with only 3 buttons on the bottom: new folder, add file and settings. After instantly becoming familiar with how the app worked I decided to test upload speeds. First I added a handful of random photos from my Camera Roll. They went through just as fast as anything I’ve thrown into DropBox, OneDrive or Google Drive beofre. Nothing surprising there. Next I tried a video. Using something I shot at Warped Tour in July which was at nearly 300mb I tried MediaFire first. It took a while and I thought for sure it was slower than the others so, I tried DropBox next then OneDrive and Google Drive after that. They both went a tad faster so I checked out quality. Between Google Drive, OneDrive and MediaFire I found no difference in video quality but, DropBox had a decrease in both audio and video. It became more grainy and the sound had a crackling to it. Lastly I made sure communication between the various platforms was up to par. After opening MediaFire on my laptop’s web browser I uploaded a couple pictures from both my laptop and iPhone. Within seconds of finishing I could access the photos on either device making it equivocally more or less efficient than the another apps I put it against. The only thing about MediaFire that irked me was that on the web based version. Instead of clicking the folder icons to open them, users must click on the folders link to the left in a drop-down menu. It seemed to be working backwards from the seamless user-friendly app version.

After testing I had the chance to ask Brent Bucci, VP Developer and Brand Relations at MediaFire, a few questions about the app and the future plans they have in store.

Q: Besides the mind-blowing price point, what features does your app have that may entice users of DropBox, iCloud, Google Drive, etc. to convert to MediaFire?A: While there are many cloud services out there looking to capture the consumer market, MediaFire is one of the only independent cloud storage solutions that has been built from the ground up with regular users in mind.
When it comes to cloud storage, we believe that the needs of consumers are very different from the needs of business users, and have looked to create features that make it easy for users to have fun and enjoy their Media in the cloud. When it comes to sharing, storing, and accessing your Media, we want to be the best service on the market, regardless of what platform you are using (Web, IOS, Android, Etc.)

Q: The current pricing at $2.49/month or $24.99/year for Pro is listed as a sale. How long will the sale go on?A: With the launch of our newest MediaFire applications for IOS, we’ve decided to officially make the $24.99 a year for 1 TB price point permanent. We see it as an official shot over the bow of our pricier competitors, including Dropbox, and Apple’s upcoming iCloud Drive service.

Q: Business accounts are on the pricey side. Are there any plans of having storage larger than 1TB for single users?A: Absolutely, for our power users, we are looking to launch several additional plans, so that users can store even more stuff in the cloud.

Q: If you could describe the user experience in one word what would it be?A: Social. When we first started MediaFire in 2006, we were looking to create the best service for sharing large files with others. While we have added many new and exciting features over the years, our passion for enabling everyday people to harness the cloud remains our primary focus.
Social technologies are our passion. Our medium is the cloud.

Q: Anything else you’d like to inform the masses about?A: At MediaFire, we are as passionate about privacy and security as you are, which is why we own and operate our own servers. We are one of the only independent cloud storage services in the world that is able to do this. (While Google, Microsoft, and Apple can afford to operate their own servers, many of the smaller services on the market rely on AWS. This translates into higher costs for consumers, as well as concerns over data privacy and security.)

Overall there are mostly pros to the new MediaFire iOS application update. The app ran flawlessly. Upload times were reasonable. Streaming media worked great. Sync between the iOS application and web site was nearly instantaneous. And the potential for 50GB free along with the competitively prices storage upgrades along with more updates to come make MediaFire is one of the top cloud storage services currently out there.

About Derek Byron

Derek Byron aka Poprawks is a passionate creative writer and Pokémaniac obsessed with more than just Pokémon. While he typically plays video games on his Nintendo consoles and handhelds, he also spends a great deal of time gaming on his PC. Graphic narratives are often his go to source for literary entertainment but, he is not afraid to crack open a large novel. He also thoroughly enjoys music of all kinds and will dance to just about any tune.